


Glass Boxes

by Mr Son (MrSon)



Category: The Yogscast
Genre: Gen, sadfic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-09-22
Updated: 2014-09-22
Packaged: 2018-02-18 08:04:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,493
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2341121
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MrSon/pseuds/Mr%20Son
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Duncan was close to a breakthrough, he just knew it.</p><p>(Note to the Yogscast: Do not read any of my fics on stream.)<br/>(I do not support the Yogscast company. I write because I enjoy the characters.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Glass Boxes

=== === ===

Duncan settled the glass box onto the table and reached over to turn the tap. Slipping his goggles down over his eyes he leaned in to watch the thin stream of liquid flux slowly fill the container up to the mark he'd measured out on the side.

"Group six, exposure for two minutes in five gallons of fluid." Duncan made a note on his clipboard and switched on a nearby machine. There was a soft whir, followed by a confused squeak, as a metal arm came down, firmly gripping a white rat.

The rat squirmed as its whiskers touched the surface of the flux, but the padded claws of the robot arm held it securely, and it was pushed down into the fluid, just barely keeping its head above the surface.

The machine ticked away for two minutes, then pulled the rat out and deposited it into a cage on a nearby table. Duncan stepped over and picked the rat up for examination.

He sighed as he hefted the limp, glowing body in a gloved hand. "Dead again. It's so difficult to get a decent sample size for the tests when the best survival rate for exposure is fourteen percent."

The rat squelched as it smacked against the wall above the trash can and dropped down into yesterday's failures.

Duncan waved his clean hand in front of his face, wrinkling his nose as a wave of flux-tainted decay wafted over. "I should take that out soon."

\--- --- ---

Duncan's labcoat billowed out dramatically as he crossed the lab in the biggest steps he could take without knocking anything over.

"Success!" he crowed, grabbing a new flux-tainted rat out of its cage and darting back to the humming monstrosity he'd cobbled together from equipment he'd snuck out of work when Xephos wasn't paying attention.

He dumped the rat into the processing chamber and flipped the latch on the door, then plopped himself into chair at the interface and began the start up process again.

Ten minutes later, he flung open the door and stopped, frozen, staring at the bubbling grey-purple mush inside the chamber. 

"No! It was working!" Duncan slammed a hand against the side of the machine. Something rattled inside, then there was a snap and the tinkle of glass. Duncan pressed his forehead against the metal beside the chamber door and groaned.

\--- --- ---

Duncan dropped the last purified rat of the batch into its new cage, and stepped back to grin at the wall of once-tainted rodents.

The previous group's survivors were still looking healthy and hadn't shown any obvious signs or relapse or illness yet, so he was holding out hope that these ones would last as long. Especially since he'd managed to double the success rate of the process, and now more rats were surviving the cleansing than weren't.

"A few more tries and I think this cure will be good to go!"

Duncan switched the lights off as he slipped out of the lab. He made his way down the spiraling stairs leading into the storage basement, and opened the door to the smallest room on the level.

The low, pulsing light of the cryotube no longer hurt his eyes when he stared into it. Honestly it would have been easy to choose a less garish shade of pink for the lights and not have had to learn to deal with it, but he'd picked this one hoping she'd get mad enough to say something.

"I think I've finally done it." Duncan laid a hand on the frosty glass. He was always leaving this room with numb fingers, but he never kept himself from touching the tube. "You're going to be out of there soon, I promise."

Inside the tube, blue liquid streaked with purple swirled around, as excess flux was constantly drained away to prevent build up in the stasis fluid. Duncan watched as a thin stream of taint trailed off slack fingers.

"It won't be long at all, and you can come out. I've learned so much in the last couple years. I have so much to teach you." Duncan swallowed against the tightness in his throat. "It's all going to be alright again, Kim. You'll see."

\--- --- ---

Lalnable opened his eyes slowly. The harsh white lights above his cell stabbed into his skull and made his head ache, so he threw an arm over his face to block them out.

Out in the hall Xephos' voice was raised loud enough that each word was like a brick to the head. "Why the hell did you think it was a good idea to serve him _that_ for dessert?!"

An equally painful voice yelled back, "How the hell was I supposed to know grape jello would make him flip out and go all murdercrazy?!"

Memories flickered into place, not quite sinking in through the ache and pulse under his skin. A recent image of reflected purple light at the edge of his vision. An older memory of being shoved, bound, into the cell he'd lived in for two years now, left on the floor to untie himself. And before that, Xephos' cold, flat voice saying, "Useless. Unplug it."

Lalnable shakily pulled himself off the floor and threw himself across his bed. He pulled his pillow over his head and refused to cry.

=== === ===


	2. Glass Cannon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lalnable escapes Yoglabs and goes looking to find out what became of Kim.

=== === ===

The feeling of the floor starting to wriggle under his feet gave Lalnable pause, and he turned to stare as purple streaks spread through the glass of his containment.

 _Flux?_ Lalnable peeled off a glove and bent down to run his fingers over the discoloration. His fingers sank into the wall and trailed through something that felt like gritty oil. _No, this is something else. What has Xephos been up to now?_

Lalnable pulled out his fingers and watched them for any sign of infection or injury, but the purple grit only fell away onto the ground, leaving his skin untouched. _If only flux acted this harmless_. Lalnable grimaced at unpleasant memories, and slipped his glove back on, glancing around him. The purple had now spread through every part of the glass, and barely any part of his containment was still clear. Though the few parts that were, he could see the surrounding hallway was infected just as thoroughly.

He was just about to reach out for the wall again, when the floor vanished beneath his feet, dropping him down into the darkness.

\--- --- ---

Lalnable stared at the fallen log in his path for a moment, then let out an exhausted sigh and turned to walk around it. He was starting to regret not having stopped to sleep in that village he’d passed two hours ago, but he knew he was almost there. Less than a kilometer, he was sure.

A matted and filthy lock of hair fell into his face, and he shoved it aside again, knocking a leaf out of it. He ignored its slow flutter to the ground as he continued his relentless trudge.

He was starting to feel the hum in his bones that meant he hadn’t gotten lost -- he was getting closer. He shoved his way past a bush and the forest opened in front of him.

Dead, leafless trees dripped purple goo onto bare ground. Skeletons of bushes dotted the clearing; the breeze picked up and one of them listed to the side and collapsed as he watched, exploding into a cloud of dancing violet lights that dispersed around the crumbling castle that had once been his.

Lalnable didn’t pause as he passed the line at which normal life ended, his stride lengthening, each footstep squelching in something that could never be mistaken for mud. He reached the fallen portcullis and paused, reaching out to lay a hand on rotting wood shot through with purple tendrils. A tiny bubble on a stalk burst at his touch, scattering glowing spores over his glove like bioluminescent glitter.

He remembered programming the computer to control this door. It was probably gone now. Maybe some copper wires still remained that could be salvaged for the metal, but the rest would be ruined.

“I’m home.” he whispered as he stepped through.

\--- --- ---

The basement lights must have gone out not long after he’d been captured. He only had one torch, but it was enough to read the disrepair in the stone and metal of the walls. Something had torn out part of the floor, leaving an exposed pool of a green glowing liquid he decided not to approach.

Lalnable poked his head into the power collection rooms, but all the generators were either broken, or missing. Even the cells that had once held testificates were bare -- not even bones to show they’d ever been occupied.

His steps were slow and nervous as he opened the hidden stairwell and, stretching over a missing step, made his way down the narrow spiral.

He almost gagged when he reached the bottom and was hit with a smell of decay. The floor was coated in a thin layer of purple slime that wriggled as he stepped onto it. Ripples moved in the reverse of what he would have expected, converging in on his boots and lapping against the sides like snakes slithering against the side of a wall. When he lifted his foot to walk forward, the slime smoothed out, only to close in again when he finished the step.

“Do you still remember me?” Lalnable’s question hung in the air, not aimed anywhere in particular. He came to a door half fallen off its hinges, encased in a pulsing membrane of something that wasn’t quite flesh. When he set his hand on it to push it aside, it twitched.

The glass of the cryotube was gone, not even any shards on the floor. Or there might have been, for what he could tell through the thick layer of glowing ooze coating the floor of the room. He set his torch down on a heap of collapsed ceiling tiles, ignoring the tendrils that rose from the slime and crawled along the wood.

“Are you here?” He stepped towards the tube. The glow was brighter inside, framing a lumpy shape slumped to one side. A few spots of white stood out against the purple, and when he reached out to touch one, the exposed bone crumbled beneath his hand.

Behind him, the torch went out.

\--- --- ---

Lalnable huddled behind the crate in the mech hangar, grateful that Yoglabs made their shipping and storage containers out of thick sheets of metal. He hadn’t been able to finish hotwiring a mech before he’d been located, and now he was pinned in the corner and thanking Yoglabs security for their lax requirements on firearm training.

Lalnable’s grip tightened around the crowbar he’d used to clear out the scientists from the hangar, and he jammed it into the lid of a crate beside him and began working it open. It was labeled “weapons”, he could only hope it was something he could use and not heavy mech-mounted artillery.

There was a shouted curse from the direction of the guards, and the incoming fire eased slightly as the rest of the squad started asking if their teammate was okay. A ricochet must have caught them somewhere non-vital. Lalnable appreciated the distraction.

The lid of the crate slid off with a clatter, and the suppressing fire picked back up again. Lalnable ignored it since he didn’t have to leave his shelter to reach into the crate and drag out a machine gun that would have been light fire for a mech, but which he was barely capable of lifting. The crowbar fell into the crate and got lost among the guns, but Lalnable didn’t need it any more.

One of the guards must have seen him pulling the gun out, because there was an eruption of shouts and cussing, and the bullet scatter increased. They must be backing away and getting ready to run.

Lalnable laughed. “That’s right! You run away! I can take you all on now!” He braced the gun against a crate and started revving it up.

The sound of the gun building power seemed to be too much; the guards all broke, no longer shooting as they all ran for the door. Lalnable listened for their footsteps as they faded into the distance. He laughed again, powering the gun back down.

“That was close.” He stood up and stepped out from behind the crate, leaving the gun behind. It was useless to lug such a heavy, difficult weapon around without knowing where to get bullets so he could actually fire it.

“You’re becoming quite the annoyance.”

Lalnable froze, turning towards the door to the hangar. A tall thin man stood framed in the entrance, one hand loose on the hilt of a sword at his hip.

Lalnable snarled, “Xephos.”

Xephos stepped past the fallen body of a testificate, careful not to get any brains on his shiny boots, and stopped a few yards into the room to watch Lalnable from between the rows of mechs. “What made you decide to come back, ‘friend’?”

Lalnable’s eyes flicked to the open crate. The crowbar would have been nice to have in his hands at this point; the machine gun was much too unwieldy to make a decent melee weapon.

“Nothing to say, friend?” Xephos took a step forward. Lalnable curled his fingers. If he let himself get hit with the sword he should be able to get his hands around that thin neck and crush it before he bled out.

Lalnable tensed to charge, and the hammer swung into the back of his skull with a squelch. His body slumped to the floor, and Honeydew stared down at it blankly, eyes not quite focused in the proper spot.

Xephos pulled out his radio and switched it on. “Maintenance? There’s a cleaning job in the mech hangar. Bring the biohazard bags.” Xephos switched the radio off and settled his attention on Honeydew. “I suppose it’s a good thing after all that I never found the time to remove those murderous impulses from your programming. Thanks, friend.”

It didn’t take long for the workers to clear out the bodies of Lalnable and the testificates. As they were mopping up the bloody spot where Lalnable’s head had landed, Xephos laid a hand on Honeydew’s shoulder, and the dwarf’s eyes cleared. He blinked confusedly up at Xephos, then sheepishly scratched at his beard.

“Sorry, Xephos. I kind of blanked out there for a moment. Why’s there so much blood on the floor? Did something bad happen again?”

Xephos gave him a reassuring pat. “No no, it’s nothing. They were just trying out a new coolant in the mechs and there was a big spill. Come on now, friend, you still haven’t seen the new servers I installed last week.”

Xephos gently pressed between Honeydew’s shoulders until the dwarf started out of the hangar, and they both left the workers to finish mopping the room clean.

=== === ===

**Author's Note:**

> With thanks to [allthe-lights-inthe-sky](http://allthe-lights-inthe-sky.tumblr.com/) for helping me write this.


End file.
